Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX.

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The voice came from a girl, who, at the moment Arnold came to the window,
was crossing the iron palisade of the piazza. She was on the slippery,
sloping leads as she repeated the cry, in a tone earnest and
thrilling,--"Dear Arnold, come in, only come, and George shall take you to
the soldiers."

The boy only gave another start of pleasure, that seemed to loosen still
more his support, crying out, "The drummer! Cousin Laura, come, see the
drummer!"

But Laura kept her way along the edge of the roof, reached the child,
seized him, and walked back across the perilous slope with the struggling
boy in her arms. Arnold the musician had noticed, even in her hurrying,
dangerous passage towards the child, the rich sunny folds of her hair,
golden like a German girl's. Now, as she returned, he saw the soft lines
of her terror-moved face, and the deep blue of her wide-opened eyes. Her
voice changed as she reached the piazza, and set the child down in safety.

"Oh, Arnold, darling, how could you, how could you frighten me so?"

The child began to cry, because it was reproved, because its pleasure was
stopped, and because Cousin Laura, pale and white, held to the railing of
the piazza for support. But the mamma came out, Laura was lifted in, the
boy was scolded, the windows were shut, and there was the end.

Arnold sat by the window, thinking. The thrilling tones of the voice still
rang in his ear, as though they were calling upon him, "Arnold, come, come
back!"

"If any voice would speak to me in that tone!" he thought; "if such a
voice would call upon my name with all that heart in its depths!"

And he compared it with the tone in which Caroline had appealed to him the
day before. Sometimes her voice assumed the same earnestness, and he felt
as if she were showing him in the words all her own heart, betraying love,
warmth, ardor. Sometimes, in comparison with that cry, her tones seemed
cold and metallic, a selfish appeal of danger, not a cry of love. He found
himself examining her more nearly than he had ever done before.

"Was she more than outwardly beautiful? Was there any warmth beneath that
cold manner? Could she warm as well as shine?"

He remembered that she had often complained to him of her longing for
sympathy; she had spoken to him of the coldness of the world, of the
heartlessness of society. She had envied him his genius,--the musical
talent that made him independent of the world, of the love of men and
women. He could never appreciate what it was to be alone in the world, to
find one's higher feelings misunderstood, to be obliged to pass from one
gayety to another, to be dissatisfied with the superficiality of life, and
yet to find no relief;--all this she had said to him.

But why was it so with her? She had a very substantial father and mother,
who seemed to devote themselves to her wishes,--some younger brothers,--he
had seen them pushed from the drawing-room the day of the _matinee_,--a
sister near her age, not yet out. Caroline had apologized for her sister's
crying while listening to his music. "She was unsophisticated still, and
had not forgotten her boarding-school nonsense." Then, if Caroline did not
enjoy city-life, there was a house in the country to which she might have
gone early in the spring. She had, too, her friend Marie. She imparted to
him some of Marie's confidences, her sad history; Marie must be enough of
a friend to be trusted in return. In short, Caroline's manner had always
been so conventional and unimpulsive, that these complaints of life had
seemed to him a part of her society-tone, aa easily taken on and off as
her bonnet or her _paletot_. They suited the enthusiasm that was necessary
with music, and would be forgotten in her talk with Mr. Gresham the
banker.

But she had called him by his own name: that had moved him. And now that
another voice had given the words a tone he had not before detected in
them, he began to question their meaning. Could Caroline put as much heart
into her voice as this golden-haired Laura had shown? Could Caroline have
exposed herself to danger as that girl had done? Perhaps any woman would
have done it. Perhaps the princess would have ventured so, to save a
child's life. Would he have ventured to do it himself? It could not have
been a pleasant thing to walk on a pointed roof, with some half-broken
spikes to catch one, in case of missing one's footing, or escaping the
fall of thirty feet below. And that little frightened-looking, timid
Laura, if he could only see her again!

He questioned whether this were not a possible thing. He had formed a
slight acquaintance with Mrs. Ashton, who was occupying the rooms below;
he had met her on the stairs, had exchanged some words with her. It struck
him it would be a proper thing to offer her some tickets to his next
concert. At this moment he was interrupted, was summoned away, and he
deferred his intention until the next day.

The next day he presented himself at the door of Mrs. Ashton's parlor. She
invited him to come in, cordially, and he was presented to her niece, who
sat in the window with her work. Laura scarcely looked up as he entered,
and went on with her crochet.

Presently Arnold opened his business.

"Would Mrs. Ashton accept some tickets for his concert that evening?"

Mrs. Ashton looked pleased, thought him very kind.

Arnold took out the tickets for herself, for Mr. Ashton. He offered
another.

"Would her niece be pleased to go? would Miss"--

Laura looked up from her work and hesitated.

"She was much obliged, she didn't know, but she had promised her cousin to
go to the theatre with him."

Mrs. Ashton, thinking the musician looked displeased, attempted to
explain.

"Laura was not very fond of music. She did not like concerts very well.
She seldom came to New York, and the theatre was a new thing to her."

"I do not wonder," said Arnold, withdrawing his ticket. "I sympathize with
Mademoiselle in her love for the theatre; and concert-music is but poor
stuff. If one finds a glimpse there of a higher style, a higher art, it is
driven away directly by the recurrence of something trifling and
frivolous."

Mrs. Ashton did not agree with the musician. She could not understand why
Laura did not like concerts. For herself, she liked the variety: the
singing relieved the piano, and one thing helped another.

Arnold looked towards Laura for a contradiction; he wanted to hear her
defence of her philosophy, for he was convinced she had some in not liking
music. To him every one had expressed a fondness for music; and it was a
rarity, an originality, to find some one who confessed she did not like
it.

But Laura did not seem inclined to reply; she was counting the stitches in
her crochet. In the silence, Arnold took his leave.

He had no sooner reached his own room than he reproached himself for his
sudden retreat. Why had he not stayed, and tried to persuade the young
lady to change her mind? An engagement for the theatre with a cousin might
have been easily postponed. And he would like to have made her listen to
some of his music. He would have compelled her to listen. He would have
played something that would have stirred all the audience; but for her, it
would have been like taking her back to her peril of the day before,--she
should have lived over again all its self-exaltation, all its triumph.

Laura meanwhile had laid down her work.

"I was stupid," she said, "not to take that ticket."

"I think you were," said her aunt, "when we know so many people who would
give their skins for a ticket."

"It is not that," said Laura; "but I didn't want to go, till I saw the
ticket going out of my grasp. I have always had such dreary associations
with concerts, since those I went to with Janet, last spring,--long,
dreary pieces that I couldn't understand, interrupted by Italian songs
that had more scream in them than music, and Janet flirting with her
friends all the time."

"I knew you didn't like music," said her aunt; "that was the only way I
could get you out of the scrape, for it did seem impolite to refuse the
ticket. Of course an engagement to the theatre appeared a mere excuse, as
long as Laura Keene plays every night now."

"It was not a mere excuse with me," said Laura; "I did not fancy the
exchange. But now I think I should like to know what _his_ music is. I
wonder if it is at all like mine."

"The music you make on the little old piano at home?" asked Mrs. Ashton;
"that is sweet enough in that room, but I fancy it is different from his
music."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Laura; "it is because the piano seems to say
so little that I care so little for it. The music I mean is what I hear,
when, in a summer's afternoon, I carry my book out into the barn to read
as I lie on a bed of hay. I don't read, but I listen. The cooing of the
doves, the clatter even of the fowls in the barn-yard, the quiet noises,
with the whisperings of the great elm, and the rustling of the brook in
the field beyond,--all this is the music I like to hear. It puts me into
delicious dreams, and stirs me, too, into strange longing."

"Well, I doubt if our great musician can do all that. Anyhow, he wouldn't
bring in the hens and chickens," laughed Mrs. Ashton.

"But I should like to hear him, if he could show me what real music is,"
said Laura, dreamily, as her hands fell on her work.

"Well, I am sorry," said Mrs. Ashton, "and you might take my ticket: you
can, if you wish. Only one concert is like another, and I dare say you
would be disappointed, after all. I told Mrs. Campbell I should certainly
go to one of his concerts, and I suppose Mr. Ashton will hardly care for
the expense of tickets, now we have had them presented to us. And as I
know that Mrs. Campbell is going to-night, she will see that I am there,
so I should much prefer going tonight. But then, Laura, if you do care so
much about it"--

Oh, no,--Laura did not care; only she was sorry she had been so stupid.

She was very much surprised, when, in the evening, towards the end of the
performance at the theatre, the musician came and joined her party, and
talked most agreeably with them. Even her cousin George did not resent his
intrusion, and on the way home imparted to Laura that he had no doubt the
musician's talk was pleasanter than his music.

Laura did not agree with him. She met with the musician frequently now,
and his talk only made her more and more desirous to hear his music. He
came frequently to her aunt's room; he joined her and her aunt at the
Academy of Fine Arts many times. Here he talked to her most charmingly of
pictures, as a musician likes to talk about pictures, and as a painter
discusses music,--as though he had the whole art at his fingers' ends. It
was the opening of a new life to Laura. If he could tell her so much of
painting and sculpture, what would she not learn, if he would only speak
of music? But he never did, and he never offered to play to them. She was
very glad her aunt never suggested it. The piano in the drawingroom must
be quite too poor for him to touch. But he never offered her another
concert-ticket. She did not wonder that he never did, she had been so
ungracious at first. She was quite ashamed that he detected her once in
going to the Horse-Opera, he must think her taste so low. She wanted to
tell him it was her cousin George's plan; but then she did enjoy it.

Arnold found himself closely studying both Caroline and Laura now. "Carl
would be pleased at my microscopic examinations," he thought.

Frequently as he visited Laura, as frequently he saw Caroline. He was
constantly invited to her house,--to meet her at other places. Yet the
nearer she came to him, the farther he seemed from her. Can we more easily
read a form that flees from us than one that approaches us? He talked with
her constantly of music. She asked him his interpretation of this or that
sonata. She betrayed to him the impression he had made with this or that
fantasie. It was astonishing how closely she appreciated the vague changes
of tones and words of music.

But with Laura he never ventured to speak of music. Whenever he played
now, he played as if for her; and yet he never ventured to ask her to
listen.

"It seems to me sometimes," said Caroline to him once, "as though you were
playing to some one person. Your music is growing to have a beseeching
tone; there is something personal in it."

"It must always be so," replied Arnold, moodily; "can my music answer its
own questions?"

The spring days were opening into summer, the vines were coming into full
leaf, the magnolias were in blossom, the windows to the conservatories at
the street-corners were thrown open, and let out to sight some of the
gorgeous display of bright azaleas and gay geraniums.

Arnold sat with Caroline at an Opera Matinee. A seat had been left for him
near her. In an interval, she began to speak to him again of her weariness
of life; the next week was going on precisely as the last had gone, in the
same round of engagements.

"You will envy me my life," said Arnold. "I am going out West. I am going
to build my own house."

"You are joking; you would not think of it seriously," said Caroline.

"I planned it long ago," answered Arnold; "it was to be the next act after
New York,--the final act, perhaps. Scene I: The Log Cabin."

"How can you think of it?" exclaimed Caroline. "Give up everything? your
reputation, fortune, everything?"

"New York, in short," added Arnold.

"Very well, then,--New York, in short; that is the world," said Caroline.
"And your music, who is to listen to it?"

"My music?" asked Arnold; "that is of a subjective quality. A composer,
even, need not hear his own music."

"I don't understand you," said Caroline; "and I dare say you are insane."

"You do not understand me?" asked Arnold, "yet you could read to me all
that fantasie I played to you last night. It was my own composition, and I
had not comprehended it in the least."

"Now you are, satirical," said Caroline.

"Because you are inconsistent," pursued Arnold; "you wonder I do not stay
here, because my fortune can buy me a handsome house, horses, style and
all its elegancies; yet you yourself have found no happiness in them."

"But I never should find happiness out of them," answered Caroline. "It is
a pretty amusement for us who have the gold to buy our pleasures with, to
abuse it and speak ill of it. But those who have not it,--you do not hear
them depreciate it so. I believe they would sell out their home-evenings,
those simple enjoyments books speak of and describe so well,--they would
sell them as gladly as the author sells his descriptions of them, for our
equipages, our grand houses, our toilet."

Arnold looked at his neighbor. Her hands, in their exquisitely fitting
lilac gloves, lay carelessly across each other above the folds of the
dress with which they harmonized perfectly. A little sweetbrier rose fell
out from the white lace about her face, against the soft brown of her
hair. Arnold pictured Laura gathering just such a rose from the porch she
had described by the door of her country-home.

"Would you not have enjoyed gathering yourself that delicate rose that
looks coquettish out of its simplicity?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," Caroline interrupted. "I selected it from Madame's Paris
bonnets, because it suited my complexion. If I had picked the rose in the
sun, don't you see my complexion would no longer have suited it?"

"I see you would enjoy life merely as a looker-on," said Arnold. "I would
prefer to be an actor in it. When I have built my own house, and have
digged my own potatoes, I shall know the meaning of house and potatoes. My
wife, meanwhile, will be picking the roses for her hair."

"She will be learning the meaning of potatoes in cooking them," replied
Caroline. "I would, indeed, rather be above life than in it. I have just
enjoyed hearing Lucia sing her last song, and seeing Edgardo kill himself.
I should not care to commit either folly myself. I pity people that have
no money; I think they would as gladly hurry out of their restraints as
Brignoli hurries into his everyday suit, after killing himself nightly as
love-sick tenor."

"I would rather kill myself than think so," said Arnold.

This talk, which had been interrupted by the course of the opera, was
finished as they left their seats. At the door, Mr. Gresham offered to
help Caroline to her carriage. Arnold walked away.

"I would kill myself, if I could fancy that Laura thought so," he said, as
he hurried home.

There was a cart at the door of the house, men carrying furniture on the
stairs. The doors of Mrs. Ashton's rooms were wide-open; packing-paper and
straw were scattered about.

"What is the matter?" he asked of his landlady.

"A gentleman has taken Mrs. Ashton's rooms. This is his grand piano."

"Mrs. Ashton! where is she?" asked Arnold.

"She left this morning. I should have been glad of further notice, but
fortunately"--

"Where have they gone?" interrupted Arnold.

"Home. I don't know where. I can't keep the run."

"It is in New England. Is there a directory of New England?"

"A directory of New England! The names of its towns would make a large
book!"

Arnold went to his room. If he could only recall the name of the town near
which Laura lived! But American names had no significance. In Germany each
town had a history. The small places were famous because they were near
larger ones. And even in the smallest some drop of blood had been shed
that had given it a name, or had made its name noted.

She had gone; and why had she gone without telling him?

If he could only have heard Mrs. Ashton's talk the evening before with her
husband, he need not have asked the question.

"Do you know, dear, I think we had better leave New York
directly,--tomorrow?"

Mr. Ashton looked inquiries.

"I don't like this intimacy with a foreigner. He really has been very
devoted to Laura."

"And, pray, what is the harm?" asked Mr. Ashton.

"How can you ask? A foreigner, and we know nothing about him," answered
Mrs. Ashton.

"But that he is the richest man in New York, quiet, inexpensive in his
ways."

"If we were sure of all that! But I don't think her father would like it.
I had a dream last night of Red Riding-Hood and the Wolf, and I haven't
thought all day of anybody but Laura. We can get off early to-morrow. I
have sent Laura to pack her things now."

"I'm afraid it is too late for her, poor girl!" said Mr. Ashton.

"She would be miserable, and her father would blame me, and I don't like
it," said Mrs. Ashton. "And I am tired of New York."

"There's your dentist," suggested Mr. Ashton.

"I can come again," answered his wife.

Arnold's determination was made. He would visit every town in New England;
he would cross every square mile of her territory. Of course he would find
Laura. Since he should not stop till he found her, of course he would find
her before he stopped.

He began his quest. He gave concerts in all the larger places; he looked
anxiously through the large audiences that attended
them,--hopelessly,--for how could he expect to find Laura among them?
Often he left the railroads, to walk through the villages. It was the
summer time, and he enjoyed the zest of climbing hills and wandering
through quiet valleys.

He met with pleasant greetings in farm-houses, so far from the world that
a stranger was greeted as a friend, where hospitality had not been so long
worn upon but that it could offer a fresh cordiality to an unknown face.
He wished he were a painter, that he might paint the pretty domestic
scenes he saw: the cattle coming home at evening,--the children crowding
round the school-mistress, as they walked away with her from the
school-door,--the groups of girls sitting at sunset on the door-steps
under the elms,--the broad meadows,--the rushing mountain-streams. But
again, after the fresh delight of one of these country-walks, he would
reproach himself that he had left the more beaten ways and the crowded
cars, where he might have met Laura.

In passing in one of these from one of the larger towns to another, he met
Caroline, on her bridal tour as Mrs. Gresham.

"You are not gone to Kansas yet?" she asked. "Then you will be able to
come and visit us in Newport this summer. I assure you, you will find
cottage-life there far more romantic than log-cabin life."

Of course he found success at last. It was just as summer was beginning to
wane, but when in September she was putting on some of her last glories
and her most fervid heats. He had reached the summit of a hill, then
slowly walked down its slope, as he admired the landscape that revealed
itself to him. He saw, far away among the hills in the horizon, the town
towards which he was bound. The sunset was gathering brilliant colors over
the sky; hills and meadows were bathed in a soft light. He stopped in
front of a house that was separated from the road by a soft green of
clover. By the gate there was a seat, on which he sat down to rest. It was
all that was left of a great elm that some Vandal of the last generation
had cut away. Nature had meanwhile been doing her best to make amends for
the great damage. Soft mosses nestled over the broad, mutilated stump, the
rains of years had washed out the freshness of its scar, vines wound
themselves around, dandelions stretched their broad yellow shields above,
and falling leaves rested there to form a carpet over it.

As Arnold, tired with his day's walk, was resting himself in the repose of
the hour, the old master of the house came to talk with him. They spoke of
the distance to the town, of the hilly road that led to it, of the meadows
in the valley, and their rich crops. At last the old man asked Arnold into
his house, and offered him the old-fashioned hospitality of a mug of
cider, apologizing as he did so, telling how the times had changed, and
what had become of all the cider-mills in the neighborhood. He showed the
large stem of the sweetbrier under which they passed as they went into the
house, such as Arnold had seen hanging over many a New-England porch,
large enough for many initials to be carved upon it. They sat down in the
little front-room, and talked on as the mother brought the promised mug of
eider.

"Are you fond of music here?" asked Arnold, as he pointed to the old
many-legged piano that stood at one side of the room.

"My girls play a little," answered the old man; "they have gone up to town
this afternoon to get some tickets to that famous man's concert. They play
a little, but they complain that the old piano is out of tune."

"That I could help," said Arnold, as he took his tuning-key out of his
pocket.

"Oh, you are one of those tuners," said the old man, relieved; "my girls
have been looking out for one."

Arnold seated himself at the piano. The old people went in and out of the
room, but presently came back when he began to play. They sat in silent
listening. "When Arnold came to a pause, the old man said,--

"That takes me back to the old meeting-house. Do you remember, wife, when
I led in Dedham?"

"I," said the mother, "was thinking of that Ordination-ball, and of 'Money
Musk' and 'Hull's Victory.'"

"That is strange enough," said the old man, "that it should sound like
psalm-tunes and country-dances."

"It takes us back to our youth; that is it," she answered.

And Arnold went on. Soft home-strains came from the piano, and the two old
people sank into their chairs in happy musing. The twilight was growing
dimmer, the strains grew more soft and subdued, dying through gentle
shades into silence. There had been a little rustling sound in the
doorway. Arnold turned, when he had done, and saw a white figure standing
there, in listening attitude, the head half bent, the hands clasped over a
straw hat whose ribbons touched the ground. Behind her was the trellis of
the porch, with its sweet-brier hanging over it. It was Laura, in the very
frame in which his imagination had pictured her.

"Have the girls got home?" asked the old man, rousing himself, and going
towards the door.--"Come in, girls. I half think we have got your great
musician here. At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of
the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all
our life long.--My girls could not have hired me," he continued to Arnold,
"to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the
little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have
brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.--We must not
let him go from here to-night," he said to his wife and children. And when
he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon
Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable.

As Laura's younger sister, Clara, closed her eyes that night, she said,--

"Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times. How did it
sound to you, Laura?"

Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said,
dreamily,--"It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice,
out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook."

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